ETO - Cruise ship to Offshore Vessels/The Rigs

[Unregistered]

Hey,

I'm currently an ETO cadet in my phase 5 and my sponsoring company is a cruise ship company, I'm just interested to know if it is easy enough to switch from cruise ship to offshore or oil rigs?

During my cadetship I have throughly enjoyed working on the cruise ships I have been on, and I will in fact be pursing a career with my cruise ship company anyway for a few years at least to gain more experience. But somewhere down the line I want to make that switch to the offshore industry because initially when I began my career in the merchant navy I always had a keen interest in going in that direction into the offshore industry and the rewards that it brings (so he says).

I will hopefully receive my foundation degree and my COC at the end of my phase 5, and I have all the STCW certificates (apart from tanker familiarisation) I need for an ETO.

Will I need anymore certificates to get my foot in the door, and what would they be? I read in quite a few websites I might need a DP certificate?

Any advice would be appreciated, especially from anybody who has made this switch or if you know somebody that has.

Thank you

[Frenchy]

Because nobody else has posted a reply to this yet I will add my contribution which might not be that relevant because I'm a deck officer. I work offshore and I can tell you that there aren't many ETO's to be found onboard offshore vessels. With regards vessels such as anchor handlers and PSV's, (and SSV's in my company), the crews are so small that the engineers are responsible for what would normally be seen as an ETOs work. In my company we have a number of electro-technical superintendents that join a vessel to carry out specific work only. This way they keep the number to the bare minimum.
I don't know how other companies crew their vessels but I believe that it is very similar.
I can't tell you much about rigs however. Im sure someone else on here might know more about rigs and drill ships than I can.
I hope that this helps a little.

[Clanky]

I seem to have missed this, so glad that Frenchy bumped it.

Traditionally, as Frenchy says, there were not many ETO's offshore, however, as companies build newer and newer boats they are realising that there is a need for them. We used to have a pool of ETO's who went around the fleet doing stuff that the engineers either couldn't or wouldn't do, most of our ships now have one ETO who goes there on a 2 months on 2 months off basis and some have back to back ETO's so things are changing. In terms of skills, there is not much new for an ETO, the machinery is different, but the electrons so go round and round the same way.

A DP maintainer course might halp a little, but they are expensive and usually type specific, so you may be wasting your money.

Good luck.

[ETwhat?]

There are ETO's within the field and its a bit of a mix of the above posts, Sub sea 7 and sea lion shipping both carry Eto's but with subsea im pretty sure that it is only a few of their ships something like a supply vessel as above just isn't complicated enough to warrant one all the time but a dive support ship or a ROV ship it becomes worth while, again yes DP will be needed but not straight off and as above it is type specific so you could spend a lot of money doing a course that isn't then relative.

A junior ETO I was working with was trying to make the move, he had a 4 week trial trip with a company on low pay but also had to do the DP course they wanted off his own account which is a fair amount of out lay.

My advise would be to contact the companies your interested in and then take it from there.

[Clanky]

something like a supply vessel as above just isn't complicated enough to warrant one

Again, that depends on many things, I am on a diesel electric supply vessel at the moment and we have a leckie for 50% of the time.

[ETwhat?]

Again, that depends on many things, I am on a diesel electric supply vessel at the moment and we have a leckie for 50% of the time.

Im not really sure what point your making, if you read my post I say " something like a supply vessel as above just isn't complicated to warrant one all of the time"

50% isn't all of the time

[MrStealth]

Im not really sure what point your making, if you read my post I say " something like a supply vessel as above just isn't complicated to warrant one all of the time"

50% isn't all of the time

I'm also on a diesel electric PSV, and we have an ETO onboard permanently.

[thatwillbenice]

I worked for 2 companies on offshore vessels (PSV and AHTS) and all but one of the ships I was on had permanent ETO's. The one ship that didn't have one was an old non-DP supply boat and we'd get a 'floating' ETO come on for a couple of weeks at a time to do the electrical maintenance. If I remember rightly the charterers wanted and ETO onboard all the time if the ship was DP.

Also quite a lot of the younger ETO's that were new to the company came from cruise ships.

[Clanky]

Wish our charterers would say that, I would have to do bloody PI's on thruster motors all day tomorrow then